Getting kindof intense there AkG. For one, I haven't seen a CPU burn since the Duron/Thunderbird days for AMD or the Prescott days for Intel. (Although maybe extreme OC'er using Liquid nitrogen have seen some more recently).

My only point is that safefy features to protect a card from being overly OC'd should always be active regardless of driver version/software installed. Nothing more.

Naw Cmet, not picking on you mate. It just peeves me off when peeps start yelling about stupid proofing out PC toys. Crap like that is what lead to the age of the bland car....no fun, but "safe". MEH.

And it REALLY peeves me off as a review to see fellow reviewers acting in such an unprofessional manner. To sell yourself for the sake of page hits...damn, have some PRIDE in what you do (asking to have "honour" seems to be to much for some people who claim to be "professional reviewers"). I do what I do becuase I love technology, not to be "famous". IF the day comes that I seriously consider doing a stunt like this JUST for page hits is the day I "retire" (there is a place for suicide runs and proving something is unsafe...BUT you have to be honest about your motivations...even to yourself).

And yes when you push a CPU to the limits they STILL will burn-out. Like you say, you just need to look at the Sub-zero crowd for casualties of the "speed war". Hell I killed a couple qauds with overclocking with a Boeras. Not all chips are created equal and some HATE extra voltage ;)

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The real problem? OCP is driver-dependant. No protection for hardware should be dependant on its software, ever. I install the wrong drivers? The card should either not perform correctly or just not install correctly with them... NOT destroy itself.

Yes, I agree that certain reviewers didn't use their best judgement... but who can really blame them? Again, ill use the example of my Proc: I overvolt to 1.6volts (wayyyyy too high). It will either A) not post or B) run very hot. In the case of A) you reset the CMOS and you're good to go. In the case of B) the thermal protection should kick in to prevent any damage. But in either case, for this example, which version of Windows or your Motherboards Bios is no factor in the survivability of the card.

I'm definitely willing to debate the merits of having pure OCP protection handled via just software, or even the fact that the GTX 590 is restricted to .96+- v not leaving a lot of overclocking headroom. esepcially for a card heralded as the next "king". In fact, I'm sure on some of these points, you and I would have similar opinions.

My primary beef however is that there are so many around the web who are putting the blame on the drivers, stating that the "drivers made the card fry" or that "poor construction" was at fault and attempting to absolve the reviewers of any blame, when in fact the result of a fried card in no way reflects on a "mistake, scandal or oversight" by NVIDIA or the manufacturers.

While there may be an argument that the card should be able to handle 1.2v, the fact of the matter is it doesn't and reviewers were VERY clearly instructed as such. So to then turn around and act like they've discovered some sort of coverup - not to mention exploiting NVIDIA to garner traffic and activity - is almost disgusting in my opinion.

And for the record, if this happened with an AMD card, my opinion would not waver. Its the conduct of those who are attempting to deflect blame away from their own idiocity that I'm attacking.

That's why initially I was eyeballing the GTX570 Directcu II to pair in SLI (directcu II 570's have 6 phases)...

Only issue was the 3 slot cooler, times two cards= HEAT+ no more slots left to use on the mobo), or I would have gone with dual GTX570 direct cu II...

Now, for about 70$ more I got 2 580 cores (downclocked, so GTX 570 SLI performance pretty much) and power consumption about 60 watts lower than SLI 570s. Also, I got more slots left free and I'm using a single slot PCI-E for 16x bandwidth (might regain a 2% to 3 %, instead of 8x/8x in my case on P67)
My beef about TPU: Isn't W1zzard (he's the one that killed 2 cards) the man who released the software GPU-Z "way" that permitted to bypass the OCP power limiter on previous cards, to keep using FURMARK???

IMHO, W1zzard, although a great guy I assume, was being REALLY curious about testing the LIMITS to the point of failure ***I ASSUME***

After my dual GTX570 dilemna, I was about to buy an HD6990, but the lower db level of the GTX590 won my heart...and "raped" my wallet lol

Just before the reviews went live I received an email from NVIDIA and they said that voltage adjustment shouldn't be done on reference cooling and also be no higher than +25mV. That means the maximum they recommend is 963v from the default .938v. Of course, we would expect the manufacturer to really play it safe. One company told us they've tested internally at 1.000v and achieved a core clock of 840MHz and a memory clock of 4000MHz QDR.

Quote:

Some websites have said the issue is isolated to the ForceWare 267.52 drivers, but this isn't true as we only tested on the FW 267.71 driver and ours did die as well when overclocking.
So, there's a few things to note :-
- Do Not increase voltage above 1.05v, even if the option is there to go higher. We've only heard as high as 1.000v has been tested.
- Ideally NVIDIA would prefer you don't increase voltage at all on reference cooling, but have recommended no higher than .963v.
- This doesn't reflect all NVIDIA GTX 590 products, nor the quality. Throwing almost +300mv on any card with air cooling will more than likely compromise the card's health.
- The issue doesn't seem to be related to any particular driver release.

From what I understand, the issue isn't with the drivers themselves pushing the cards to higher voltages, or causing the issue, but it is with the fact that they allow the voltages to go to 1.2v with absolutely zero OCP rules for the GTX 590.
As TweakTown found out, there were able to push the voltage higher, while using other drivers, by using aftermarket programs that circumvent the OCP (GPU-Z) No drivers are going to be able to enforce overvoltage protections if you disable them.

Wizzard was another one who mentioned he fried his second card (because dumping one $700 card just wasn't enough) while using the FW .71 drivers. But again, I can't confirm this, but I suspect he would have used GPU-Z to disable the OCP rules that HAD (as far as I've read) been implemented on that driver version.